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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Abeokuta: A British Impediment in West Africa: The John Gallagher and Ronald Robinson Theses
Author:Williams-Myers, A.J.
Year:1984
Periodical:Journal of African Studies (UCLA)
Volume:11
Issue:1
Period:Spring
Pages:4-14
Language:English
Geographic terms:Nigeria
Great Britain
Subjects:elite
colonial conquest
Abeokuta polity
colonialism
History and Exploration
Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups)
Economics and Trade
Abstract:The author concentrates on the use of the periphery in West Africa as it relates to an expansionist mid-Victorian Britain during both an informal and formal phase of empire building. In their attempt to make the Lagos hinterland responsive to the commercial needs and so-called humanitarian demands of the metropole, the British employed the use of 'Westernized' Africans to hasten the modernization process. It is with this West African experiment in socalled 'modernization', through African 'social engineering', that the Robinson and Gallagher theses of informal and formal empire become quite useful in an assessment of imperialism as it relates to the periphery, and in terms of their arguments that mid- and late-Victorian expansion should be viewed on a historical continuum. They argue that far from being an era of 'indifference' the mid-Victorian years were the decisive stage in the history of British expansion overseas. In the case of Abeokuta, a new group of educated Africans engaged in a battle against time to modernize the Egba state before the British took over. The Egba acted as obstacles to slow down the imperialist machine at the coast. Notes.
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